Already plagued by consumer backlash over Spore's ridiculous copy protection scheme, Electronic Arts faces renewed criticism from buyers who have discovered that only one user account can be created per copy.

EA's DRM spyware on the long-awaited game Spore turns out to have an added side-effect: if you live in a household with multiple players, you all have to share the same account. The game's manual says otherwise, but after repeated queries on the EA forum, a company spokesperson confirmed this.

That's right—if you're in a household with several potential Spore players, and you want each of them to have their own account, you will have to buy multiple copies of the game.

As The Consumerist points out, page 52 of the Spore manual (see pic) says that buyers of the game may have multiple user accounts, a common practice. The DRM, however, apparently precludes that from happening. An EA rep on the Spore forums termed it a "misprint" in the manual.

GP: With good - but not great - reviews, will the game that was to have been designer Will Wright's masterpiece ultimately be better known for EA's ham-handed attempt to tighten the screws on game consumers?

Comments

im also dissatisfied with how EA handdled spore. Honestly at first im not too mad about the DRM but the 3x installation made really pissed at EA. First of all i really live far from any EA offices. Im in manila, i bought an original game of spore what if my cpu for some reason gets f***** up and had to reinstall the game 3x then bye bye spore. i cannot call the hotline because it will be more expensive than buying a new game. we know emailsa isnt really the best way to communicate complaints to them because of the slow replies. There should be a petition to get rid of the limited installations...
Honestly i dont buy original games that much unless i like it. As for spore i bought one waited for it a long time, once it was released i bought it instantaneously then just finding out that theres a 3 installation limit. i felt i was robbed by the F**** up EA. They treat the original buyers like criminals and honestly its not the ryt way to treat their paying customers. They should release a patch or update to take out the 3 limit rule... because it really is bothersome.
I hope EA gets sued big time. Someone whould stand up against them and kick their big corporate A*s*es.
As for will wright's creation i think its really fun but not upto par with other games of his, and i think EA is also responsible for not making it a success in sales because of EA's stupid DRM

The copy protection didn't even work, it got cracked and torrented the same day it came out in Australia. Really, I love the game, I bought it legitimately, I even pre-ordered it, but this makes me mad. The game is notably NOT the same without the smooth streaming downloads, and what if I want to share it with a family member in my household? They aren't going to get the same experience, and if we share the same account our creations are going to pile on top of each other and become cluttered. Not to mention I doubt it'd let two people sign into the same account at the same time anyway.

This particularly effects families with children, shouldn't mom, dad, brother and sister have their own accounts for their own unique game experience? Instead of calling it a "misprint" (which now they could be sued for false advertising) why don't they send a patch that fixes this problem and allows multiple accounts. If their copy protection actually manages to be useful it should be able to tell the copy is legit.

PC gaming is dying. DRM is one of the things killing it, and EA's hands are extraordinarily bloody. With a console, I don't have to worry about compatability issues, software/hardware issues (it's not an XBOX 360) or DRM. My worst problem is finding a game that actually lives up to its hype; but the market's growing, and so presumably are the developers' skills.

I might get a copy of Starcraft II for my Mac, but that's it. So long, PC gaming. We had a lot of fun, but you just can't deliver anymore; and I'm fed up with your numerous issues.

My respect for EA dwindles every passing day. From what I hear: their sports titles are glitchy/bugged/freeze prone, Mercs 2 is plauged with bugs, and now this? EA is officially the @$$hole of the gaming world.

This is a terrible story for 2 parties - legitimate users who simply wanted to play Spore and couldn't because the activation servers went down and EA because Spore was cracked even before it was released.

Often developers walk a tightrope with the tradeoff between protection strength and the degree of impact on legitimate users but this was a failure on both dimensions! Is this really what the publisher wants to 'accomplish'? Why not use a solution which is friendly to honest users, has no impact on development time and the strongest available protection against crackers - see the whitepaper "Is Anti-Piracy/DRM the Cure or the Disease for PC Games?" which can be downloaded here http://www.byteshield.net/byteshield_whitepaper_0005.pdf

This game is cute and fun, but if you haven't bought a copy, don't worry. Either wait it out til it's on a console or just don't bother. For all the crap that EA's pulling, you're better off just not getting involved with any of it. I was a little disappointed in the game itself after all the buildup. It IS fun, it's just not as robust and involved as I (along with others) had hoped.

This game was a must-buy for me and my partner - until this came to light. This one detail, more than anything else, is what will make us say, "No way, EA," for this game and any others that have similar setups. But forcing us to buy two copies of the game so that we can both play and have separate, individual accounts is only one part of it...

When I buy a book, I have the right to turn around to sell it to someone else when I'm done reading it. Legally, I'm allowed to do the same with software, too. But this DRM completely shuts down my legal ability to sell Spore to someone else if I decide I'm done with it. Which is, of course, part of the point... big-name game makers have long hated the secondary market, because they don't get a cut of it. Never mind that they're not entitled to one.

So, count this as one more lost sale to EA. And no, I'm not pirating Spore either... I'm just encouraging others to stay away from EA. But you know what makes this REALLY absurd? I ran a pair of Spore Creature Creator tournaments at the gaming convention I went to a few weekends ago. That won't be happening again.

GP: "With good - but not great - reviews, will the game that was to have been designer Will Wright's masterpiece ultimately be better known for EA's ham-handed attempt to tighten the screws on game consumers?"

I think that's already happened. If the game had been better it might have got a bit more of a free ride over the draconian DRM issue, but since it's merely an adequate game it's getting its reputation from the misplaced hype and the disaster that is its DRM.

Of course, it didn't exactly turn out to be Will Wright's masterpiece anyway - clearly it has been significantly dumbed down from what it could have been. It's just the latest in a long line of games that were supposed to be masterpieces, but which turned out mediocre. It seems like there's some universal rule that states that any game that's meant to be a masterpice cannot actually turn out to be one. It's like Freelancer all over again.

Unfortunately, things like this will only stop when either EA starts losing a large amount of money because of it or huge backlash is felt publicly.

If you want EA to stop using underhanded tricks like this everyone has to stop buying their games or everyone has to rally together publicly and start a campaign to stop this crap.

I can tell you right now, that was no misprint in the booklet. This isn't the first time EA has put out a game and did not disclose the truth about what exactly you are purchasing and if people don't stop and confront EA on it, "misprints" will continute to happen just to get your money.

I bought this game. I love it, but I consider the purchase to be a mistake politically. The next EA game I get, if any, ever, is coming from the PIRATE BAY! The next game I intend to purchase is Fallout 3, which is %100 free of EAids, but still probably doing the DRM nasty. EA: Go suck it, you did it to yourselves.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, we no say no site of no sort in public. We lie and say we got it from a friend that is done using it instead. We dont need to get a perfectly good site shut down... Wait, never mind, there is 100s of those sites.

Submitted by Time for a Lawsuit (not verified) on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 11:27.

I read the manual saying it was multi account possible, so the DRM wasn't going to bother me much. Besides when I'm going to reformat my computer this upcoming month like I do every month. Which then I'm going to start getting pissed. But getting back to the issue. I accepted the terms and agreements. Meaning this is a contract with them that I agree to their terms and like me they also have to meet those terms.

Since I can not create multiple accounts for spore. They are not living up to their agreement. Be it a misprint or not it's time to tell EA they can not take advantage of it's customers and just try to milk as much money from them as possible.

Whats really sad is they could have turned Spore into a good example of how to do a DRM free game that still has some copy protection.

e.g. When you buy the game, you get 1 username/password, which you register online when you install the game. That CD-Key is tied to the username/password. You can run the game without a username, but then you don't get access to the On-line content. Done. No DRM, no Install Limits.

I actually have an ongoing support issue open with EA over this matter, which has just been moved to "senior level" due to nobody being able to explain to me (in a satisfactory manner) why I'm expected to buy 2 copies so that both me and my partner can play on seperate accounts.

I've tried everything to get a second account registered, but with no joy. Also, according to support, EA will not reset the account which makes it impossible to give the game to anyone else, or sell it on, not that I have any desire to do that at present. Of course, you don't find this out until after opening the game, at which point it's virtually impossible to return anywhere (UK).

Here's a couple of quotes from my replies so far for those interested, directly copied and pasted from the emails in the order they were received.

"I would like to inform you that you cannot create another account for this game. This is because of the unique serial code that's included with the game. If you want to create another account you will need another game for the registration of it."

"A registration code can only be used once to create one account. In addition, the account registered once cannot be reset. You will need to login to the game using the same account name and password with which the game is registered."

"Just a quick follow up on your issue, you will not be able to create multiple Spore accounts on one computer."

And EA continues to uphold their reputation of ruining what most likely would have been a great game.

Honestly, EA is nothing more than a plague in the gaming industry. It buys the controlling stock of a game development company, slaps on a dead line, imposes cost restrictions, and then releases a game with problems and bugs left in the game. Then, when you ask them to address these problems, they ignore you, argue the fact that such a problem exists with the game, and after a few months of attempting to resolve the issue, the move on to the next project since they already have your money and leave the game broken as hell.

If the game flops, which most do, they lay off the majority of the staff of the development company they just bought and then let it burn to the ground.

The Battlefield series is a perfect example of this. If they haven't deleted all of the posts, take a look at the Battlefield 2 forums. Probably about 90% of those forums was nothing but complaints of how the game did not work, one way or another, and how people do not have to cheat in that game because the majority of that game code has holes in it to allow people to easily exploit, from walking through walls to be completely invincible.

After Battlefield 2 had terrible results at launch they laid off everyone at DICE Canada and closed it down.

The reason EA is so big on DRM now is because people got tired of paying them for games they would never fix so they got it for free and, honestly, I can't blame them for doing so.

Maybe if EA would stop releasing games that have alpha relesae issues in them and had a customer support team that doesn't argue with you every other sentence, maybe they wouldn't have to worry about people pirating their garbage games.

even though i'd like to know where those stats come from, i don't doubt it one bit.

as i've said before this DRM is bullox, you get to pay full price to RENT the game. god forbid you have a system problem, or upgrade at all and then want to play your game again. cause post 3 installs (or 1 if you have an error like i did in Crysis) you either have to rebuy the game or fight for weeks on end with EA to reset your install count.

atm i have a ticket in thats been IGNORED for 5 days to reset my mass effect installs. sad thing is, they won't actually reset them at all, they just credit you 1 more (and iirc lock out any other copies that you may have if you own more than one system) i've updated the ticket daily even to keep them aware i AM watching, and i CAN tell time. their site says "24 hours" for a response time. though i bet this spore issue has them bogged down big time no less :) I'm one happy disattisfied customer at this point, knowing the boycott of EA grows so fast over 1 game, it took me 3 of these DRM infected games to crack and stop.

Just remembering download numbers on torrent sites. If I remember right at least. Don't quote me on it though... I could have sworn Sims 2 had 5,000 in the first week, and I am seeing over 20,000 for Spore.... even if more people are pirating since 2004, I doubt it is that much more on average, and I doubt the site has casually grown that much too... especially since the Apartment Life expansion is only at 1,000.

Not saying I didn't pay for Sims 2, I just didn't want to put the disk in all the time... Rather keep them in the closet in their cases. Between creating my own iso or downloading, I figured I might as well be lazy, especially since I had just flushed the computer.

I am hoping for a huge backlash to go after EA hard, and not just complain.

I'm seconding sortableturnip, this looks like a great game—right up my ally—but the whole DRM fiasco has given me a great incentive to sit back and wait for a rerelease and maybe a price-drop. I'm not going to encourage EA by buying software that I see as spyware and that sees me as a criminal.

I was reluctant to even try to install the game on multiple computers at once, but decided to let the wife give it a try. Like her Sims 2 expansions she was unable to read the disk at all in her Plextor DVDRW drive, so I put the disk in my drive and shared it over the network which worked just fine. She plays Spore offline with no problems, but now that I know the manual states that multiple online accounts are permitted we will give it a try.
I have no problems with this DRM so far. We can install the game on multiple machines and neither of us need the disk in the drive. That's a lot more generous than 99% of games out there. Except for my wife's problems reading the disk I'd take this DRM over most others any day.

Wow, limited installs, manual "misprints" regarding accounts, evolution vs creation... I'm starting to miss the good old days of Spore controversy when the only issues were "Will it ever come out?" and the Penisaurus Rex.

Manuals are misprinted all the time, and its not malicious. I think I have the original World of Warcraft game manual somewhere, and it has completely different racial perks than are in the released game. Believe it or not, some development teams wise up/down prior to release.

That really wasn't so much a misprint as after they printed the manual they decided to change things for the sake of balance. Keep in mind that the manuals were printed while WoW was still in beta. Plus, nobody ever reads the manual for an MMO.

I'm not buying it, haha, the game is decently good though takes too much time to do simple things, it is a massive time hug. Mario Kart Wii, you play the game, and you look at the clock and it seems like you have been playing for a while because you just ran 8 races, then you realize it has only been 30 minutes. Spore, you just did a minor task that you think should take only 5 minutes, you look at the clock, it is 2 hours later.

It is one thing to make the game take longer to play so you can't finish it in 5 hours, it is another that you are wasting time with meaningless animations/sound FX/transitions when you just make it all take 1/10th the time and still be as entertaining. (esc is your best friend in spore, skip the sceens, then just read the little box in the top left that is only 15 words long or so instead of wasting 3 minutes watching the video.)

Replay value is almost non-existant, which is how I got the game, friend played it through twice, and said, I'm done with it, you want to try it? I figured why not, I'm not going to buy the game anyways.

DRM is definitely not right... EA deserves a class action suit against them for it. I feel bad for Wright, because he got screwed. EA getting a bad rap for taking over BioWare and trying to take over TTwo, SecuROM, $10 demo, EA making deals with id to publish some games for them and give them all the money exclusing cost as long as they talk nice about EA to help their reputation... If he still had his own company, he would have broke records with this game, even though it is a flop IMO, it is extremely innovative with the dynamics of the game. Dynamic worlds, animation, and so on. So it is a must have game, but not for the gameplay. (I don't remember ever saying that about a game before... For my I guess Myst was the same way, but gameplay was decently fun and interesting with a great story behind it...)

Shout box

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm

Andrew Eisen: That sounds horrifically boring. Doesn't sound like an interesting use of its time dilation premise either. 08/01/2015 - 5:36pm

Mattsworkname: an observer , seeing this sorta frozen world and being able to explore without any restriction other then time. no enimes, no threats, just the chance to explore08/01/2015 - 5:34pm